It’s my first birthday!

Happy birthday to me… well, this blog!

This first year has absolutely flown and yet I’ve learned so much along the way, about: blogging, my personal style, design taste, writing style, topics that interest me, the little tweaks and features of WordPress, running WordPress, as well as growing my design skills by constantly challenging myself to come up with original designs for each post.

Ups, downs and uncertainties

It’s been a typical first year too where there have been times where I’ve wanted to give up, had no ideas, it felt like too much of a chore and I felt like I was publishing content that no-one read. But you guys have made it all worth it, and I’m so glad I’ve pushed through the difficult parts to be where I am today, on my first birthday!

I remember when I first started, I had no idea really what I wanted to write about, although I knew I wanted to be creative and share some of my work and inspiration. I was constantly bombarded with uncertainty from all the influences out there in the blogging world – there are some freaking awesome blogs out there that just seem to blow me away with every post they do and there were definitely times I felt like I just could never be as awesome as they were.

But you know what? It’s not about them and it never has been. In saying that, I mean that we are all awesome in our own way, and it’s easy to try and replicate someone else’s style or taste but really, we all have our own unique style – sometimes it just takes a little time and trial and error to truly find it.

Plus, we evolve over time. Heck knows I love a good rebrand, and it’s a good sign if your style grows and changes with tweaks here and there over time. The last thing a creative needs to be is stagnant, after all!

It’s freebie time!

So, I made another freebie (yay!) for you guys to celebrate .. a little different this time – some printable wrapping paper! I hand lettered this with this simple brush pen manufactured by Daiso Japan, which I purchased from eBay. It can be a little dry to use if you letter with a loose, fast hand, so it’s probably a better pen to use for the times you want more deliberate and careful strokes. Either way, it’s cheap enough to give it a go!

That’s enough from me for today. Here’s to my second year of leysaflores.com – may it be even more awesome, I can’t wait for all the great stuff I plan on sharing with you guys!